[SMMAssociates]

Moderators: This sounds off topic, I'm sure - skip on down to the Bold text and then make a decision, please. Thanks!

I just bought a new HP Ipaq 3117 PDA. My seven-year-old Palm III is getting a little hard to see (yeah, I know, I'm seven years older.... :) ).

One of the things this model does is include WiFi (802.11b) capabilities, so I can use an Internet Explorer clone (when near a WiFi access point) to do a little surfing.

I thought it might be fun to watch the NRA News streaming videocast on the thing. Doesn't work - I'm not sure why, although I think the "regular" IE plugin for this may not exist for the Pocket Windows environment. (Some similar stuff does work on this thing. Got me.... :confused: )

However, what was interesting was that when attempting to access the base NRA.ORG site ('cause I couldn't remember the URL for the Newscast), a bit after it started loading, a popup appeared to the effect of "Do you want to load the NRA.ORG site?"

Same popup when I clicked on the NRA News icon....

The site works in IE6 and NetScape 4.8 on my notebook (and IE6 on the big desktop - I never tried it in NetScape up there), although NS requires Java be turned on (which I don't usually do).

Anybody else out there run into something like this? There's (to my knowledge - the documentation is non-existent) no "net nanny" sort of stuff installed, and a couple of porn sites work fine without comment. :cool:

I suppose the NRA site is using some strange HTML or is a memory sink that's waking up something in IE to protect the PDA, but.... (There are a ton of graphics on the site, and not a lot of memory in the Ipaq.)

Impromptu blog:

The Ipaq is great. I'm still going goofy trying to get my old "Contacts" file into the new one, and can't print to one of two printers or make the thing synchronize with the desktop using WiFi, but the "Contacts" thing was the dealbreaker. I was going to send the thing back, but I got about half of that working this AM, so I'll be keeping it. Tech support doesn't seem to quite understand the problem :cuss: , but that's kind of normal these days. I'm spending way too much time trying to figure the thing out.... :evil:

Regards,

[Flyboy]

At first guess, I would have suggested that it's asking you to confirm your website selection to prevent you from being billed for a 404 or other accidental page load. With other sites functioning fine, though, I start to wonder.

If the device connects through a standard wireless connection (802.11a,b,g--WiFi), fire up a packet sniffer in a place that it can watch all connections made by the PDA and see what it's requesting. If it only requests nra.org, it's probably (but not certainly) OK; if, on the other hand, it starts talkig to other sites--particularly HP, Microsoft, or other "phoning home" sites--I'd start talking to a lawyer, a (sympathetic) reporter, and post it to Slashdot (http://slashdot.org), among others.

[SMMAssociates]

Flyboy:

I don't have a packet sniffer....

However, I managed to accidentally hit that site tonight while mucking about with other things (the wireless synchronization almost works now) and noticed how long it takes to load that site v.s. many of the others.

I'm guessing that HP is trying to help us out here - noting that a very complex site has been selected (they're apparently assuming bluetooth or dialup, or perhaps a slow PCS sort of thing, not 802.11b), and giving us a chance to bail rather than continue and sit there for a while.

Gunblast.com also posts that message, but their homepage is seems to set some kind of records for embedded graphics.

Dunno....

Regards,

[teCh0010]

I have an HP 6315 GPRS/802.11b/Bluetooth and it loads nra.org without any prompts.

[SMMAssociates]

teCh0010:

I have an HP 6315 GPRS/802.11b/Bluetooth and it loads nra.org without any prompts

Thanks....

I think it's a quirk in IE on this one. It's not really a problem except for having to click on "OK". I think it's just a "way too many graphics on this page for sanity if you're in a hurry or didn't want to be here" thing :) .

However, I did find it funny that NRA.ORG was the first place I saw it.

Can you get NRA News to work? That would be convenient. All I get there is a black screen, after the same question. (Earphones and "outside" might be convenient.)

Avant-Go doesn't seem to know about this one, but I only got into that last night.

Thanks,

[Highland Ranger]

I have a Palm device.

That said, the screen in both cases (WIndows and Palm) just isn't set up for web page viewing the way a (much bigger) computer screen is . . .

So most of these devices have a setting in their browser where the device loads the requested page from a proxy server furnished by the manufacturer.

The proxy parses and caches the computer web page, rearranging it so that it displays faster and nicely on the device's smaller screen.

I leave the proxy option shut off because I don 't use the device for surfing other than getting email and I don't need that going through someone else's server.

In the cases where I have used it, proxy makes surfing common pages like yahoo much faster.

Long story short: It is possible that your proxy is turned on and that it doesn't cache the NRA page, so it is asking you because it needs to load it direct.

Try looking for that setting and play around with it turned on and off to see if this is an anti gun thing or just a tech thing.